40th Edition - May 12, 2025

Recognizing Potential Research Misconduct

All members of the IU community are obligated to guard against and report potential research misconduct. Research misconduct includes falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism.

Falsification: manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. Some examples of falsification may include:

• Reuse of images to represent different experimental conditions
• Image manipulation, such as cropping, flipping, resizing, recoloring, etc., such that the new image does not reflect the same properties as the original
• Alteration of eligibility dates, procedure dates, test results, or other research results, or omission of data to conform to a specific hypothesis
• Failure to fully disclose required information in proposals, including current positions and scientific appointments or affiliations, Current & Pending (Other) Support, and Collaborations & Affiliations. See https://research.iu.edu/news-events/announcements/2025-03-31-ora.html for more information regarding Collaborations & Affiliations disclosure. It is important to note that falsification can occur in any research record, which includes grant proposals, raw data, processed data, clinical research records, animal research records, laboratory records, study records, laboratory notebooks, progress reports, manuscripts, abstracts, theses, recordings of oral presentations, online content, lab meeting reports, and journal articles.

Fabrication: making up data or results and recording or reporting them. For example, creating documentation for experiments, visits, procedures, or interactions that did not occur.

Plagiarism: the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. Cases of plagiarism may include reuse of another’s work without citation, or failure to credit all authors who made substantial contributions to a work that would otherwise have warranted authorship or acknowledgement. Plagiarism typically does not include authorship disputes such as complaints about appropriate ranking of co-authors.

If you observe or suspect falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism in research, please reach out to Research Integrity Office staff for a confidential consultation:

• Amy Waltz, Research Integrity Officer, acthurst@iu.edu
• Leslie Albers, Research Integrity Project Manager, lealbers@iu.edu
• Drew Mack, Research Integrity Project Manager, madmack@iu.edu

Allegations of potential research misconduct are addressed in accordance with the IU Policy on Research Misconduct (ACA-30). Recent revisions to federal regulations necessitate changes to ACA-30. The IU Research Integrity Office convened a working group to analyze the changes and is currently proposing revisions to ACA-30. If you have questions or comments about the regulations or ACA-30, please contact the IU Research Integrity Office at rio@iu.edu. 

IRB Considerations Following Federal Grant Terminations or Stop-Work Orders:
In recent weeks, several federally funded human subject research projects at IU have been impacted by grant terminations or stop work orders. These developments may have implications for associated IRB-approved human subjects research. As noted in a recent guidance from the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), “If research has been suspended or terminated, it may be important to consider how to appropriately and safely transition research participants off the study.” To support compliance and protect research participants, the IU HRPP is reaching out directly to affected investigators with guidance on how to proceed. If you believe your study may be impacted and have not heard from our office, or if you have questions about next steps, please contact the IU HRPP office at irb@iu.edu.

Remote or Electronic Survey Research:
The HRPP has observed an increase in instances where survey links, as part of human subject research projects, are accessed multiple times by the same individual or by automated bots, often in studies offering participant compensation. This can jeopardize data quality, inflate costs, and compromise research integrity. To mitigate these risks, researchers conducting remote survey studies are strongly encouraged to:

• Enable CAPTCHA or similar bot-detection tools to prevent automated responses
• Restrict multiple entries by using unique survey links or limiting responses per IP address (as appropriate and consistent with the study’s privacy plan)
• Monitor response patterns to detect unusual activity (e.g., rapid response times, duplicate IPs)
• Password-protected surveys
• As appropriate, avoid publicly posting survey links when compensation is involved

These precautions can help ensure data validity and responsible use of research funds. For more information or help implementing these practices, please contact the IU HRPP office at irb@iu.edu. As a related resource, you may find this article https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eahr.500217 of interest. Please note this article is being shared for informational purposes and does not reflect official HRPP policy or guidance.

AAHRPP Re-accreditation Effort Underway:
We are pleased to announce the launch of IU HRPP’s AAHRPP reaccreditation effort. The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) is a nationally recognized accrediting body that promotes high-quality research protections. The IU HRPP has been AAHRPP-accredited since 2005, with our most recent reaccreditation in 2020.

We have now officially launched the institutional effort to prepare for our next reaccreditation, which includes a multi-step process: a Step 1 application (due June 2025), a Step 2 application (due November 2025), and a site visit (likely in January 2026). An internal HRPP working group, in partnership with colleagues across the Office for Research Compliance and other units, is actively preparing the Step 1 application. We look forward to sharing our progress in the months ahead as we strengthen and highlight our commitment to ethical, compliant, and participant-centered research at Indiana University.

Certificates of Confidentiality (CoC) Updates:
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has recently issued an announcement for Certificates of Confidentiality (CoC) for research not funded by NIH. Per their announcement: “The NIH Certificates of Confidentiality (CoC) system is temporarily unavailable. Currently, NIH cannot accept submissions to the CoC system or Institutional Official verifications. An update will be provided by July 2025. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Note, CoCs for NIH-funded studies (i.e., deemed issued CoCs) are not affected.” We encourage researchers to review the IU HRPP Webpage on CoCs and contact the HRPP office at irb@iu.edu with any questions.

At the beginning of April, the Kuali Conflict of Interest and Commitment Disclosure Form was added to the list of training compliance tracked in My IU Compliance. You may receive notifications from this system for training assignment, upcoming expiration, or expiration/noncompliance depending on your employment status and/or role in IU research. If you are listed as key personnel on any research projects, funded or unfunded, you must have a current disclosure with the role of researcher selected to be compliant with UA-17: Conflicts of Interest and Commitment. If you do not update your disclosure form before it expires you will be listed as noncompliant in My IU Compliance and notifications will be sent to you and your supervisor. For more information on My IU Compliance please visit https://compliance.iu.edu/training-education/index.html.

CITI Training for IBC Researchers:
As of April 2024, the IBC no longer accepts training completed in Canvas/Expand. All IBC training (Biosafety, NIH Recombinant DNA Guidelines, Bloodborne Pathogens) must be completed in CITI (https://research.iu.edu/training/required/biosafety.html ). Starting in April 2025, Canvas/Expand courses no longer display in Kuali Protocols IBC (KP IBC). If a “Bloodborne Pathogens for IBC Researchers Training” or “NIH Recombinant DNA Guidelines” training is showing as incomplete or expired in KP IBC, please ensure that it has been completed through CITI. As a reminder, submissions in an approved state in KP IBC are static. Training courses only update when an IBC submission is in progress or under review. In order for training records to update in the Research Personnel section, please make sure to click the pencil icon next to each lab member’s name.

Core Facility SOP:
The IU IBCs recently approved a new SOP for core facilities. All core facilities will be required to have an umbrella IBC protocol in place to cover the work that the core performs on the research community’s behalf. The core protocol should be separate from individual research protocols. RSCO will share details soon and will reach out to core facility managers in cases where a new protocol or amendment is needed.

Updates to IBC Minutes Requirements:
Starting on June 1, 2025, the NIH Office of Science Policy (OSP) will require that approved IBC meeting minutes be made public on the institution’s website. 

DaRT Migration and Retirement:
Please discontinue the use of the Data and Reporting Tool (DaRT), effective immediately. DaRT will be retired May 12, 2025. All Office for Research Compliance reports have been migrated to Decision Support (DS).

Decision Support (DS) functions similarly to One.iu.edu. Once you log into DS, enter the report name in the search bar. For consistency and to ensure accurate search results, all the Office for Research Compliance reports include “ORC” in the title name. Once your report returns in the search, you may Favorite it by clicking the heart icon. It will then appear as a default when you log into DS in the future. If you have questions or concerns regarding the migrated reports, please email orcsps@iu.edu.

ORC CITI Research Compliance Look-up Report:
The Office for Research Compliance provides a report of  CITI courses completed using IU credentials. This report enables users to search for completed CITI courses for any IU learner, displaying the course name, completion date, and expiration date. Additionally, it includes a direct link to the CITI Course Certificate, which can be downloaded and saved for documentation purposes. Please note, the report is refreshed daily but includes a 24-hour delay in updates. To access the report, visit DS and search for “ORC CITI Research Compliance Look-up Report.” For any questions or technical issues, please contact the IU HRPP office at irb@iu.edu.